Oracle-Sun x86 hardware gets Intel Xeon upgrade

Oracle on Monday released a collection of new Oracle-Sun x86 hardware, encompassing servers as
well as storage and networking devices.

The servers are based on Intel Xeon processors that came out in March and include five rack
systems and one blade. Oracle is pushing Solaris, Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on the machines,
but they will also support Windows, VMware and the Red Hat and SUSE Linux distros.

The support for multiple operating systems is a plus for Tom Becchetti, a Unix and storage
engineer at a large manufacturer in the Midwest. “We’re getting away from Solaris on x86,”
Becchetti said. “Our media servers were running Linux and Solaris, but we had stability issues
[with Solaris]. So it’s like, OK, back to Linux.”

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Xeon 5600, 144 GB max. memory

Oracle is also adding a storage blade, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network blade and two 10 GbE
switches based on the new Xeons.

While other server OEMs announced products when the Intel chips came out in March, Oracle is
just now announcing the upgraded Oracle-Sun x86 hardware.

“There is a very vigorous quality process we put our products through,” said Dimitris Dovas,
director of product management for the Oracle-Sun x86 product line. “We need time for full
integration with the new technology and appropriate testing of the new technology.”

For more on Oracle-Sun x86 hardware:

Dovas added that Oracle has been shipping the new hardware since May for customer testing.

Oracle wouldn’t comment on its future relationship with Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
(AMD). Sun was one of the first server vendors to start selling AMD-based systems, but there has
been no talk of any new AMD-based x86 hardware since Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun in
January. There was a report in April that Oracle
would drop AMD servers, but company executives wouldn’t say whether that was true.

“We will continue to select the best chip components for our products going forward,” said
Graham Lovell, senior director of product management for systems at Oracle. “We are still shipping
AMD-based systems and have the opportunity to include AMD in future products.”

When asked whether there will be Oracle-Sun x86 hardware based on the new AMD chip that came out
in March, Lovell said the company doesn’t “really discuss … plans for future components.”

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